On June 29, Dr. Jennifer Clary-Lemon will deliver a Rhetoric Unbound lecture. Dr. Clary-Lemon’s talk, entitled “Noting Hope,” will take place at 8.00 p.m. Eastern. The lecture will last 30 minutes and will be followed by discussion.
Lecture Description
As Leslie Head says of hope in Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene, it is a practice rather than a feeling. It is not, as some maintain, a simple optimism or Pollyanna approach to solving problems. This talk turns to the emergent rhetorical practice of noting as one of hope when faced with environmental loss. Although the genre of field guide has a century-old history of documenting the natural world with the impetus to observe, discern, and educate, it is also a well-known tool of the colonial impetus to capture, threaten, and categorize (see Izaguirre). Moving away from this tradition of noting of field as a measure of the realms of science and natural history, this talk reflects on noting in new terms. A way to notice and comment on temporal specifics of loss, whether in terms of black lives (Sharpe), posthuman thinking (Tsing et al.), interspecies connection (Tan; Bradfield et al.), or temporalities of climate change (Renkl), noting—that is, combining visual image of field, observational documentation, and affective investment in a field site—is a way to come to terms with what we are losing as humans grapple with the realities of the sixth extinction. Noting offers a focus on the particulars of absence, presence, and the inconsistencies of climate realities in service of hopeful practices that allow humans to listen to nonhumans and to come to terms with loss, attachment, longing, and change.
Register for Dr. Clary-Lemon’s Lecture
Click here to register for Dr. Clary-Lemon’s lecture.
Rhetoric Unbound 